How did certain types of berries like cucumbers and eggplants become classified as vegetables instead of fruits?
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Because berries and fruits are both pretty arbitrary definitions, plus it depends on what you mean by fruit. In a culinary sense, the distinction lies in the fact that fruit are sweet whereas vegetables are not. In a biological sense, however, a fruit is, essentially, a nutritious snack the plant builds around its seeds to encourage animals to eat it, thus spreading said seeds.
Berries are a subset of fruit, but since the distinction between fruit and vegetable is pretty arbitrary in a culinary sense (for instance, a potato is technically the fruit of a potato plant, yet no cook would call potatos fruit), some berries end up being fruit while others are vegetables.
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